Tesla unveiled its new Mannequin Y with a refreshed design in China and lots of identified that it appears to be like remarkably just like Xpeng’s P7, which is humorous as a result of Xpeng itself was a Tesla copycat at its inception.
It goes full circle.
Henry Xia, who based Xpeng in 2014, admitted overtly that he was influenced by Tesla and by the automaker’s announcement that they had been open-sourcing their patents.
It was reportedly the primary firm to truly take up Tesla on utilizing their patents free of charge.
However issues took a flip for the more serious from there.
Xpeng went past simply taking inspiration from Tesla and its considerably open patents. It copied Tesla’s Autopilot and cluster consumer interface:
Tesla later additionally initiated a lawsuit towards Guangzhi Cao, a former Autopilot engineer who stop to affix Xpeng’s autonomous driving staff. The automaker accused the engineer of stealing Tesla’s Autopilot supply code for Xpeng.
The lawsuit was settled in 2021. Xpeng was not the celebration to the lawsuit and acknowledged that its personal driver-assist options relied on in-house growth.
However Xpeng didn’t cease copying Tesla there. The Chinese language firm blatantly copied Tesla’s web site for a quick second in 2020:
Now, a number of years later, you may argue that it’s going the opposite manner round.
Yesterday, Tesla unveiled its Mannequin Y design refresh in China with the largest change being a front-end redesign that’s remarkably just like Xpeng’s P7+ and different automobiles within the Chinese language EV automaker’s lineup.
It options the identical 3-section lightbar and really related headlights popping out of the aspect air intakes:
Xpeng senior designer Rafik Ferrag additionally seen the resemblance, and in a brand new publish on Instagram as we speak, he mentioned that he believes Tesla is “paying tribute” to Xpeng’s design with the brand new Mannequin Y refresh:
In 2019, Xiaopeng P7 introduced a pattern of entrance cross-over lamp to your entire trade. Actually, this set of options was designed by us in 2018 and has been used as Xiaopeng’s DNA and id since then. It’s nonetheless being paid tribute to by numerous producers similar to Tesla and LX.
Proper earlier than Tesla’s unveiling of the brand new Mannequin Y, Xpeng shared the primary official photos of its new G7 SUV, which includes a related front-end:
Xpeng has seen its car deliveries surge 34% in 2024 in comparison with Tesla’s deliveries being down 1%. The G7 can also be positioned to be certainly one of Tesla’s prime Mannequin Y competitor in China, which is its most necessary market.
Electrek’s Take
It all the time goes full circle. There’s little question in thoughts that Xpeng copied Tesla prior to now and whereas I can’t verify that Tesla copied Xpeng right here, it appears extraordinarily more likely to me.
Xpeng has been doing very effectively with its lineup in China this 12 months and now the G7 is critical competitors to Tesla’s predominant cash maker: promoting Mannequin Y automobiles in China.
Is Tesla getting nervous?
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